Luis, you might not be so familiar with this outside the English-speaking world, but the best known account we have about the natives of Tierra del Fuego comes from Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. By the time of his visit in the 1830s, the natives' way of life had been changed by white people to the extent that they were regularly begging from passing ships. There's a famous quote that you see a lot:
“These Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbour not far distant a woman, who was suckling a recently born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked child.”
And
"Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals.
Their country is a broken mass of wild rock, lofty hills, and useless forests. Nature, by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his country.”
